Ads on Cable Were Worse - Learn Stuff

We all know that ads can be quite annoying, though a necessary evil for media. Back in the day of only broadcast television, commercials took up about 10 minutes of every hour-long show. The number of ads on streaming services today varies, but the worst offender was cable.

When cable TV came along decades ago, broadcast television was riddled with ads, but it was free. Anyone with an antenna could pull down a signal and watch the limited number of network channels (you can still do that, by the way). The method used to convince millions of people to switch to a monthly-pay cable system was that they were promised no commercials.

Of course it did not take long for that policy to go out the window, and soon cable had more commercials than the ol` rabbit ears. At it`s peak, 30 minute shows had about 8 minutes of advertisements, and hour-long shows had a whopping 18 minutes of marketing content.

With the rise of the internet, streaming services started out the same way. Yeah, you have to pay, but there are no commercials! As we all know, it didn`t take long for that ride to end as well.

Modern services like Amazon Prime have ads, but they don`t interrupt your show to display them. Most free-to-watch services have ads, but not nearly to the extent cable did - just a few minutes per show.

And then there`s YouTube. Content on that website has ads before, ads after, and everywhere in-between. The thing with YouTube is that they pop ads in wherever and whenever they want, so it really breaks up the experience of whatever you are watching.

At least it`s not as bad as cable.